WTF? Why are we regressing in CPU and GPU power? Every other platform is advancing on these fronts.

You are just running a browser, so how much power do you need? Until more demanding stuff arrives on Chrome OS, it's just wasted potential.

Agreed.

I do hope they get better marketing. Some friends of mine work at a retailer, and noted most of their Chrome books get returned when customers figure out that it pretty much is only a web browser. Better consumer education/marketing would save a fair bit of hassle I think.

I mean, my friends try to explain it. Can't speak for their coworkers.

Methinks Google made a very smart call in first aiming Chrome at extremely low price points for the WOW effect, and now beefing them up to where they could be credible SOHO devices, with enough spec to look and perform pretty nicely.

So Microsoft has already abandoned the sub-9" screen OS market (at least, abandoned trying to directly profit) and now Google is getting aggressive in the 21" all-in-one space. I personally wouldn't want to run an atom CPU but it seems a lot of cost-conscious shops will likely find a way to shave another $50 off their generic desktops.

Sure would love to see the financial terms between Intel and the OEMs. I saw some suggestion that Intel is selling the CPUs at full price, but giving a VERY generous marketing allowance to make sure that Intel gets the next couple of years' worth of low-end/mainstream desktops and laptops.

It seems that Microsoft saw something like this coming a few years ago but didn't have such great luck with RT, perhaps because they were trying to protect their desktop margins by forcing an Intel CPU for legacy code. I'm still a bit surprised that RT was allowed to flounder as much as it did, since Redmond lost any leverage over Intel being forced into a Plan B with Google.

Bay Trail Chromebooks are going to give up a significant amount of CPU and GPU performance compared to even the slowest Haswell chips...

WTF? Why are we regressing in CPU and GPU power? Every other platform is advancing on these fronts.

Every other platform is crushed by Haswell already, and last I checked (several months ago, not about any new ARMs/Atom revisions) Bay Trail was already beating ARM on the performance front (and fairly close on the power front). And for what these machines are being used for (Chrome and nothing else), they really don't need a heck of a lot of power (because they can't really do a heck of a lot).

Personally, ChromeOS seem like a step down from an Android in most regards, except for it having better keyboard/mouse support. Seems like Google only keeps ChromeOS around because of their ultimate goal of trying to push everything onto the web (which is really Google's ultimate goal, because it means more data/money for them).

Methinks Google made a very smart call in first aiming Chrome at extremely low price points for the WOW effect, and now beefing them up to where they could be credible SOHO devices, with enough spec to look and perform pretty nicely.

So Microsoft has already abandoned the sub-9" screen OS market (at least, abandoned trying to directly profit) and now Google is getting aggressive in the 21" all-in-one space. I personally wouldn't want to run an atom CPU but it seems a lot of cost-conscious shops will likely find a way to shave another $50 off their generic desktops.

Honestly, a lot of shops could operate their "PCs" on Atom perfectly well. A lot of our personnel, for instance, use mostly a few web interfaces, Outlook, and Word; with the odd Excel or PDF. ChromeOS (or similar) could handle that load on a low-power Atom process with ease.

I think the long-term goal is to get people weaned from installed apps to network apps, which will probably pay more dividends for large deployments (schools, large companies) than small shops. Even if you still have to deploy a few workstations or full laptops, if you can move 90% of your workforce to generic, remote hardware I suspect you could save a good bit.

The c720 already gets 8 - 9 hours of battery life on a Haswell, and it does it for $200. Not sure why anyone would want to step back in power for a couple hours more life. The horsepower is nice to have when you've got a couple media heavy tabs open.

I just don't get chromebooks or chrome os. It is like running a handicapped version of Linux. The 14" chromebooks are like $400 so you might as well get a regular laptop at that price. I put chrome os dev build of 36.x on an 11.6 acer netbook but I wasn't impressed.

I just don't get chromebooks or chrome os. It is like running a handicapped version of Linux. The 14" chromebooks are like $400 so you might as well get a regular laptop at that price. I put chrome os dev build of 36.x on an 11.6 acer netbook but I wasn't impressed.

It's really quite simple. All some people need is a web browser. If you don't get that, then Chrome OS isn't for you.

A few DSLRs might not be able to interface directly with Chrome OS. My old Nikon D40 can because it uses the USB mass storage standard, but my D5100 cannot because it uses MTP. Chrome OS does not currently support MTP, but it will soon.

I just don't get chromebooks or chrome os. It is like running a handicapped version of Linux. The 14" chromebooks are like $400 so you might as well get a regular laptop at that price. I put chrome os dev build of 36.x on an 11.6 acer netbook but I wasn't impressed.

A $400 windows laptop running with a HDD and the same hardware? No, thanks

A few DSLRs might not be able to interface directly with Chrome OS. My old Nikon D40 can because it uses the USB mass storage standard, but my D5100 cannot because it uses MTP. Chrome OS does not currently support MTP, but it will soon.

I just don't get chromebooks or chrome os. It is like running a handicapped version of Linux. The 14" chromebooks are like $400 so you might as well get a regular laptop at that price. I put chrome os dev build of 36.x on an 11.6 acer netbook but I wasn't impressed.

For the same reason people run a handicapped version of OSX - they neither need nor want the complexity of a normal desktop.

But then why this instead of a tablet? Well that's probably more your point.

Once the Chrome OS becomes less of a toy I'll be much more impressed with battery life. Especially considering I can get real work done with a Macbook Air running Mac OS X (not iOS) that has much longer battery life than that. And, it's nice not having every other thing I do on my Mac being watched and logged by Google.

Especially considering I can get real work done with a Macbook Air running Mac OS X (not iOS) that has much longer battery life than that.

True, but you can get two or even three Chromebooks for the price of one Air. So not really comparable.

(Off topic: I just noticed the spelling corrector in Chrome knows the word 'Chromebook', but not 'Macbook'. Go figure.)

I'm not sure I'm following you: if you're surrounded by a small flock of Chromebooks does that make you any more productive? I don't know about you, but I just use the one computer, so I'd rather put the money into one thing that is functional rather than three cheap things that aren't.

WTF? Why are we regressing in CPU and GPU power? Every other platform is advancing on these fronts.

You are just running a browser, so how much power do you need? Until more demanding stuff arrives on Chrome OS, it's just wasted potential.

What if you're not just running a browser? You can install different OSes on most of them. Then, the sky's the limit ("the sky," is a serious limit, mind you, often only a few Zs, since I use my Chromebook as a portable Dwarf Fortress box, for the most part ).

Once the Chrome OS becomes less of a toy I'll be much more impressed with battery life. Especially considering I can get real work done with a Macbook Air running Mac OS X (not iOS) that has much longer battery life than that. And, it's nice not having every other thing I do on my Mac being watched and logged by Google.

I can get "real" work done with ChromeOS (it has some awesome text editors, and cloud IDEs are pretty impressive these days). And if I can't do it, I can just switch over to Fedora...and it didn't cost a thousand bucks

Especially considering I can get real work done with a Macbook Air running Mac OS X (not iOS) that has much longer battery life than that.

True, but you can get two or even three Chromebooks for the price of one Air. So not really comparable.

(Off topic: I just noticed the spelling corrector in Chrome knows the word 'Chromebook', but not 'Macbook'. Go figure.)

I'm not sure I'm following you: if you're surrounded by a small flock of Chromebooks does that make you any more productive? I don't know about you, but I just use the one computer, so I'd rather put the money into one thing that is functional rather than three cheap things that aren't.

Crazy idea? You tell me.

Certainly not a crazy idea, I prefer a premium system too. But it's still not really fair to expect the same experience from a device that's 2 to 3 times cheaper. These systems aren't competing with each other. Chromebooks are competing with budget Windows laptops.

So only 1 hour longer battery life in return for slower browsing. I'd pick the faster one. Even on the web, faster processors make a difference.

I'm guessing the battery is much smaller? 'Cause there's no way that swapping out a Haswell part for a Bay Trial part should yield such a small increase in battery life.

I'd think that too. But then the whole comparison doesn't make sense. If we don't know what laptops Intel was comparing and if the batteries are of different size, then what do the 11 and 10 hour battery times mean?